SEO & PPC Case Study: Success in the Recession – July 2009 Newsletter

As promised, here is the web version of my July e-mail newsletter. Read on to learn how a small business is making more sales now than before the recession! Thanks to SEO & PPC advertising this dog trainer is selling out his high-end program

I bring news of success in this recession. Best of all, the methods used are accessible to all of you. If you’re not up to reading all this, scroll on down and at least check out the pictures. Then, imagine what this could do for your business.

Gene has been working with dogs for over 25 years. Locally, he’s known as The Dog Guy. I have been Webmaster of his website, www.cc-ch.com, since early 2006.

Gene is a skillful marketer in his own right. He owns the local minor league baseball team’s mascot, Lucky The Wonderdog. He has self-published a quality children’s story book – also available to read online as a virtual book! He holds multiple patents on dog related inventions. Of course, he’s an excellent dog trainer too.

So, what do I do for Gene? The most important things I do are Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising with Google Adwords.

Background: Canine College of Chapel Hill offers a board and train program. Drop off your dog for 4 weeks with $1,470 and pick it up afterwards along with follow-up courses. Well business hadn’t been very good since the economy tanked. So, Gene asked me to target Raleigh — the largest city nearby. Canine College is about a half hour from Raleigh, but that’s not a bad drive for a 4 week stay.

The Campaign: I implemented a site-wide SEO strategy focusing on the most important keywords as defined by keyword research. Monthly adjustments were made and changes in results placement tracked. A limited amount of link-building was also carried out.

In tandem to this, several geo-targeted Google Adwords campaigns were deployed. The ads were continually split tested to improve performance. Additionally keyword performance was tracked and adjustments made on a monthly basis.

Split testing was an integral aspect of the the Adwords campaigns. By constantly running two slightly different ads side-by-side we were able to determine what copy worked and what didn’t.

Gene did his part too. Together, we made frequent updates to the content of his site. Search engines love to see an actively maintained website.

The Results: Gene sold out his Board & Train Program for July at $1470 per dog! August is almost full already. Every dog he’s currently training is from Raleigh or Fayetteville. Gene never got business from Raleigh, let alone Fayetteville, when he relied on the Yellow Pages and posters. He wasn’t even selling out before the recession!

How? He dominates the search engine results! Gene’s site is the first result when you google [dog training durham], or [dog training chapel hill]. So far he’s only made it to the top of the second page of results for [dog training raleigh]. Nonetheless, when people search for dog training in Raleigh they can’t miss Gene’s ad above the search results!

Chapel Hill: Canine College gets first ad, first local result, and first organic result

Raleigh: Gene's ad above the search results

Durham: First organic result, Only ad, and a local business result!

Gene is getting 46.91% of his traffic from Google searches. On top of that, 15.64% comes in from Google Adwords — mostly from Raleigh. His site gets a good steady stream of traffic for a local business, with over 400 unique visitors in the last 30 days. The average visitor spends about 3 minutes on the site and looks at 4.7 pages.

He pays under a dollar per click for his ads, on average. Continual improvements to the ads have taken the click through ratio from 0.5% up to just under 3%. Plenty of those clickers and searchers are converting into happy customers.

Since visitors in Raleigh live too far away to be interested in lessons, the ads shown in Raleigh focus on the in-board program. When a user clicks the ad it takes them straight to the page about the in-board program. Searchers nearer by see ads that mention both in-board and lesson programs.

Thanks to a well managed SEO & Google Adwords Campaign, Canine College is moving forward with its expansion plans and is faring the recession well!

If you would like to see your website bring you plenty of business I can’t recommend SEO and PPC methods enough! Strong placement in search engine results is priceless. Google Adwords allows you to get on that front page before your SEO has time to work its magic. Once you’re placing well, the ads continue to strengthen your presence on those results pages.

Contact me today to learn how these strategies could be applied to your company!

PS: Did you hear that Google is going to release an open source operating system? To start, it’s only targeted at netbooks like the Asus eeePC. I sure am looking forward to seeing how that plays out! Read more on Google’s Blog.